So, rephrasing my question in the terms you use here: How many individuals are you aware of for whom you have a reasonably strong prior weight that any other configuration of atoms that will contribute to equally positive changes in the future as their current configuration would take longer to search for in configuration space than simply letting them continue to exist as-is?

Heh. MAN, English sucks for this.

I'd say a few hundred that I'm directly aware of (either through direct acquaintance or media awareness); given my sample sizes and some back-of-the-envelope math, I can extrapolate that out globally to "a few million people".